Imagined Solace
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: There's a difference between accepting boundaries and living by them, and Sloth and Envy are right on the line between the two. Slight Envy x Sloth.


**Sloth and Envy don't get enough screen time together…and I wonder about them sometimes. They would make an interesting couple. **

**Pairing: EnvyxSloth**

**Warnings: None, really. **

_Envy_, says Sloth in that voice of hers that is either deceptively tranquil or tranquilly deceptive, and she turns up a corner of her mouth in a strange sort of acting and lowers her head. This is the last time she will speak with him. _Our master says that now our plan is all set_. That is what she'd like to think, at least, with Sloth, Envy is never quite sure. In fact, he gets the idea that most of the time she herself. In that way, she's both more and less of a monster than the rest of them, because she's almost human. Closer to humanity. Closer to humanity's ends and she seems to barely care.

_Of _course_ it is, Sloth,_ he replies as if he's been going over the preparations for centuries. He has. It may seem hard to believe, but when he thinks about it- and it's hard not to- it seems like it really has been four hundred years. Endlessness. And though Sloth has only lived four years, but she talks like she knows her boundaries, like she was made to live by them and accept them. But there's a difference between accepting boundaries and living by them. It's just that Envy (and maybe Sloth) doesn't want to know what it is.

Why would he? Why would any of them?

And she's quiet for a moment, silent in her thoughts. Envy can only imagine what they are, but he has the feeling that they wouldn't be anything he could forget anytime soon. They would leave their mark on him if he knew, one way or another he would hear her voice in his mind telling him all the words he had been fed by weaker ones before her and the current Wrath and Lust because after four hundred years you _understand_, even when you don't want to, and Envy rarely wants to.

And she speaks to him in almost the same voice she would use with Wrath, as she slides closer to him across the floor, her feet almost seeming to not exist underneath her deep skirt. _What are you going to do? _she says but her face doesn't match her voice. That's what's so strange about Sloth, there always seems to be something a bit off about her, but you can't tell what. She doesn't explain more than she has to and sometimes she doesn't explain herself at all, not why her mouth turns down as if she has something to be sad about and not why she sometimes just freezes when Dante speaks to her. She shows affection but it seems to play with her own mind, games she is drawn into and doesn't know whether or not she wants to play them. Envy's seen it all. He knows how this goes.

So he decides to humor Sloth and himself. _What do _you _think will happen? _he asks, emphasizing the _you_ as if he's asking others as well but he cares about her answer the most. (They'd all say the same.) He has asked others before. But they haven't mattered, not even her, not even him. But when you're alone and you begin to think of how four hundred years can go by and nothing really changes and nobody notices, and if they do, they don't show it. But it's not his place to say. He doesn't understand Dante, but he doesn't really want to be like her.

Sloth, however, not only does Envy feel like she's something strange and alien, he thinks she's just a bit frightening. He doesn't fear her, but she makes him uncomfortable. As the newest of the homunculi, she should just be the current disposable errand runner. But that's what they all are, Sloth realizes that, and she lives wondering when her time will be up. She knows that is what they are, even Envy. No matter what he'd like to think, there isn't much he can change. He can scream and kill and die and turn into every human in the world, but that is his role and there are no shortages of humans trying to bring back loved ones and supplying more to fill the role, enforcing their code of rules. They are man made creations, not for themselves, distorted love turned to useful commodities. Brought back from where they should be to where they never were, or have no place being, depending on who you would ask (and you wouldn't).

She looks at him and then cats her gaze down, as if deep and thought or in mourning (or both). Her voice barely wavering, she says in a voice full of impenetrable emotion, a mechanical tone- _we'll be human_. Whatever that's supposed to mean. She's not quite sure what to expect if she ever were to become human, and she knows she won't, so it doesn't matter. But when their savior and captor is human, the word doesn't have the same meaning as it does when Sloth says she would like to be one, its meaning of safety and virtue. For Envy, it hasn't meant that for four hundred years. As it appears to him, Sloth realizes this but doesn't want to think there's not a better, attainable place (because _they _can't have any dealings with heaven and if the rest of earth is closed to them, that leaves no hope and no reason, right?).

There is reason. There are reasons why each one of them go on, whether they want to or not. And for Sloth, the lie which she recognizes is a nice fantasy that fills her with false ideas, she settles for the imagined solace. That is enough to make anyone mad and maybe she is.

This answer stirs something in Envy which he doesn't like to admit he has, and he unconsciously takes step back from Sloth. _You will _never _be human! _he screams, a plastered on grimace serving as a barrier. If Sloth notices what is underneath, her only recognition is an upturned corner of her mouth and bowed head as if she knows what it's like to be him. She walks to him and puts her cold hand on his shoulder, looking down into his eyes.

_Whatever will happen_, she says as if there are other fates aside from Dante's plan, other fates which come into place and as if she can just stand by and not care how much she sacrifices or works or gives up on (it's not that way). She can almost hear the echo of her own words and she lets her eyes stay in Envy's for just a moment longer than they are supposed to be, because they cannot be doing this. And yet they are, because Sloth's hands are on Envy's shoulders, she feels how small they are and he feels how soft and firm her hands are and her hair smells of paper and tea and she's pulling away before they do anything else to regret, because they _are _regret, and the only feelings they are allowed to have are their names. Sloth walks out of the room steadily and unceremoniously. _Goodbye, Envy. _

Whatever will happen. Three words from the mouth of a mere doll, but words are power. However you look at it, Envy's hearing their echo and he's never felt so suspended or bound. He's never heard words so true.

A small, sharp _un-smile _plays across his face, and he understands how Sloth has survived, she understands that she has no clear direction and that she has no purpose for herself and doesn't try to escape and delude herself. His mind, he notices, has never felt so clear.


End file.
